Winstongator, I did mention that potential aspect of "efficiency" in my previous post:

Possibly, implementing this modulation technique in practical circuits results in significant power savings at the transmitters and receivers, compared with the alternatives. That was only alluded to, but not demonstrated.

The article very clearly discussed the supposed inefficiency of differential pairs, implying that the main thrust here was to develop something that transmits more bits per symbol, or more bits per sec per Hz.

In the article, mention of energy savings was made in these two instances only, the rest being about b/s/Hz "efficiencies":

The 40nm demo chip sends 12 Gbit/s per wire at less than 4 picojoules/bit, dispersing eight bits across eight wires. Parts of the chip's technology could be adopted for use in memory interfaces or on 2.5D chip stacks.

And,

Using 12 taps of decision-feedback equalization, it will drive signals a meter through a Megtron-6 board and connectors, consuming 9 picojoules/bit or less

If you re-read the article, I think you'll agree that the main emphasis was on spectral efficiency, not energy per bit per second.

You are missing a huge part of the 'efficiency' equation - energy consumed per bit transmitted (pJ/bit). Data converter interfaces are one place where this efficiency is huge. You have faster converters whose internals are getting more efficient, however, the interfaces want less wires. This means faster serial interfaces whose power consumption can approach the consumption of the core converter.

Power consumption is a huge issue in backplane situations too, as the large number of channels in a confined space makes routing the heat out of the system difficult.

Amin presented at ISSCC this year. I would imagine there is a good explanation in the paper.

@AminS, I hear what you are saying, but I don't believe most IP companies create IP, they buy it and monetise it often in industrial blackmail type situations. Most patents are expressions of the bleeding obvious or a slight variation on an existing theme and are worth nowhere near what people want for them. SW patents are a case in point, often being only a written (in source code) version of something that is already done.

SW in the US is covered by patents and copyright, which is just ridiculous.

Re copyright and the length of it, to have copyright extend to 70 years past the end of the author's life is unconstitutional when you think that the purpose of copyright is to encourage works to be created, if you can live off one work for a ridiculous amount of time how can that encourage you to do more? Most countries aren't as silly as the US on this.

There are also instances of patents where a pharmacutical/chemical company discovers a natural compound used by poor natives and then patents it and forbids the original user from making use of it. Some seed in India used as an insecticide was affected by this. Then there is Monsanto creating gene spliced crops which eventually contaminate surrounding farms then Monsanto sues the natural farmers for using their seed.

Then there's the issue of public money funding a lot of research that then gets patented by someone working at the Uni and the public has to pay for what they paid to have developed.

@Etmax, the discussion about patented technology in standards is probably as old as standards themselves. On the one hand, people are interested in the best possible solutions, and on the other hand, they would like it for free. This can work well for device manufacturers since they will make their margin on the devices they will sell down the road. They have an incentive to offer their solutions to standards bodies for free.

IP companies have a different model, of course. They create technologies, and want remuneration for the work they put into the development, and profits down the road. For every successful solution, there are numerous other solutions that the companies invested in and did not work (be it technically or otherwise), so the cost associated to a successful solution is not just the development time of that solution alone. There are numerous examples of patented technologies in standards. MPEG is a prominent example that comes to mind, but many other examples also exist in wireless standards. Patents are therefore not a show stopper IF the economics is clear to all parties beforehand and IF it is made completely clear what the patent landscape is.

To me royalties and licensing fees for a patented technology is not unsimilar to what we see in the entertainment industry: a good movie can generate revenue infinitely many years after it was created. The bell rings every time it is rented, watched online, bought, or even if parts of it are used in other films. The market will decide how much profit a film makes. No one can force a termination of the royalty stream. Though patents are at a slight disadvantage because of their finite protection horizon, by and large they are subject to a similar economics.

@alex_m1: Kandou's tech covers all chip-to-chip links, and is applicable to all memory standards, be it any flavor of {G,LP}DDRx, HMC/HBM I/O, inside the HBM stack (with a different type of driver), or between a tower of stacked DRAM devices and a controller via an interposer (silicon or organic). The missing reference to GDDR is an omission.

@Rick, I think standards should be patent free or almost free to the extent that uptake isn't discouraged.

At the end of the day patents are a monopoly granted by governement to reward innovation and to help recover the investment in the development and for the benefit that society receives. When a patent forms part of a standard then the uptake is generally in the millions so the patent fee should be very small to reflect the user volume, otherwise the end user pays a ridiculously high cost because the patent holder is more interested in making 100 units a a million dollars each rather than a million at $100 each. and the end user receive little benefit.

If the patent is for a low volume product then ok, there must be some return on investment so a higher patent fee but for volume products somewhere between a few cents to a few $$.

Lets say someone invented a new SMT package that offered some benefit then <1% of the package cost would be fair (because of the volumes) if it's a standard because let's face it, millions weren't invested.

I'd also say because the constitution says that patents are granted to an inventor for a time to benefit society as much as the inventor a patent should be terminated if it's been shelved (eg. to exclude competition) as otherwise society has received negative benefit.

When patents result restrictions resulting in loss of life, government should step in and decide patent income (thinking medical patents mostly) as again people dying is not society benefitting.

This is just a quick off the cuff (not deeply thought out) suggestion of what needs looking into, and I do welcome comment. Sorry I diverted a bit from the "standards" part of your request. I'll sit down and think more along those lines and get back to you.

@Bert : You don't have to have a new type of cable to get a new channel. By using the physical properties of noise, diffferntial signaling taskes two wires and combines them into a single analog communications channel with superior noise properties. That's one way to look at differential signaling. Than using a simple demodulator(comparator) , you get quite a good performance.

In a similar fashion, this method takes X wires and turns them into a multi channel with superior noise and power properties. There's a white paper in the company web site which i found describes this method quite well.

Alex, I agree completely with your first point. In the two most recent cases, we're talking about improved modulation schemes in existing channels, which is what prompted my reactions. It's not a matter new type of fiber, or new type of copper cable, or something like quantum communications.

Possibly, implementing this modulation technique in practical circuits results in significant power savings at the transmitters and receivers, compared with the alternatives. That was only alluded to, but not demonstrated.

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